THE GMB union lost its battle for union recognition at the Amazon BHX4 site in Coventry last month. It fell agonisingly short, losing by just 29 votes out of the 2600 workers who were in the bargaining unit being balloted.
The struggle for recognition, to allow the GMB union to represent members and negotiate over workers’ pay and conditions, began in 2022 when the workers in Coventry began walking out on strike unofficially.
They were incensed by paltry pay rises offered of between 35p-50p per hour. Coming after the sacrifices made in order for Amazon to keep the distribution and fulfilment centre working during the Covid-19 pandemic, a small group of workers had simply said enough is enough.
This was the opportunity for the GMB to speak to them about unionising themselves. As the weeks and months progressed, GMB membership grew. Members went on strike for higher pay 37 times before the recognition ballot.
In June 2023, after the GMB applied to the Central Arbitration Committee for statutory union recognition, the union withdrew its application as it became clear it would not win recognition, whether through the measure of union membership density or a ballot.
This was because Amazon had hired 1000 extra workers at the BHX4 site in order to reduce GMB density and dilute the existing level of support amongst workers supporting recognition. This was the beginning of the so-called “dirty tricks” the company used to finally defeat the union.
But after further hard work, the GMB resubmitted the application. It passed all the hurdles necessary over levels of support in order to get to the point of the ballot being held.
But, again. Amazon played its hand of “dirty tricks”. This included threats that no pay rises would be offered if workers voted for recognition – and setting up pop-up stands with QR codes on them that, when scanned on their phones, took workers directly to the part of the GMB union’s website where their union membership could be cancelled.
That Amazon had the legal latitude to do all this and more stems from the very weak statutory union procedure that Tony Blair’s (below) “new” Labour government set up in 1999. Going live on June 6, 2000, and after the influence of business interests through the CBI, the procedure allowed umpteen ways for employers to fend off attempts to gain recognition.
Among them are that the bargaining unit for which union recognition is applied for must be compatible with “effective management”; that the union has no legal right of access to the workers where the balloting route to recognition is used until just before the ballot.
And also that if a union loses its application for recognition at the final stage, it cannot apply again until a period of three years has passed. This bars the GMB from trying again any time soon.
In the meantime, the GMB is continuing its legal action against Amazon for the “unfair practice” over the QR code. The chances of success are probably quite slim and it’s not clear whether this would force a re-ballot. In any case, the outcome of the legal case will not be anytime soon.
The lesson from this Amazon case is that in a David and Goliath battle, it’s always going to be very hard for David to win when he comes up against not only one of the most anti-union companies on the planet but also one of its biggest, richest and best-resourced.
All this means that Labour’s “New Deal for Working People” (now renamed “Labour’s Plan ‘To Make Work Pay’”) has to be a serious bit of kit to level the unlevel playing field in the world of work.
First, and foremost, Labour must deliver fully and quickly on its pledges in its forthcoming Employment Rights Bill to 1) give unions free, unhindered access to workers; 2) simplify and streamline the statutory union recognition procedure; and 3) have a genuine and robust unfair labour practice to stop employers coercing workers into not supporting a union.
If decent procedures and regulations were put in place, unions would be able to recruit and gain recognition much more easily so that power could be rebalanced in the workplace.
The costs of union organising would be lowered as it could take place more quickly and with less employer resistance. But the present danger with Keir Starmer – as with Blair before him – is that Labour will allow the business lobby too much influence in all of this, both in terms of the substance of the reforms and in how quickly they come into force.
Gregor Gall is a visiting professor of industrial relations at the University of Leeds and author of Mick Lynch: The Making Of A Working-Class Hero (Manchester University Press, 2024).
